File:Europa Carbon Dioxide Distribution (NIRCam and NIRSpec IFU Image) (2023-113).png

English: This graphic shows a map of Europa’s surface with NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the first panel and compositional maps derived from Webb’s NIRSpec/IFU (Near Infrared Spectrograph’s Integral Field Unit) data in the following three panels. In the compositional maps, the white pixels correspond to carbon dioxide in the large-scale region of disrupted chaos terrain known as Tara Regio (center and right), with additional concentrations within portions of the chaos region Powys Regio (left). The second and third panels show evidence of crystalline carbon dioxide, while the fourth panel indicates a complexed and amorphous form of carbon dioxide.

Astronomers using Webb have found carbon on the chaos terrain of Tara Regio and Powys Regio. Surface ices in these regions have been disrupted, and there likely has been a relatively recent exchange of material between the subsurface ocean and the icy surface. Carbon, a universal building block for life as we know it, likely originated in Europa’s ocean. The discovery suggests a potentially habitable environment in the salty subsurface ocean of Europa. The NIRSpec/IFU images appear pixelated because Europa is 10 x 10 pixels across in the detector’s field of view. NASA, ESA, CSA, Gerónimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC), Samantha K Trumbo (Cornell University)

Gerónimo Villanueva (NASA-GSFC), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)